Coprophagy in nineteenth-century psychiatry

Area of Science:

• Medical History
• Psychiatry
• Microbiology

Background:

• Historical European pharmacopoeia utilized excrement for diverse health conditions.
• 1870s Austrian psychiatrists pioneered pathological interpretations of institutional coprophagia.
• This marked a significant departure from previous medicinal uses of excrement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the development of pathological accounts of institutional coprophagia by 1870s Austrian psychiatrists.
• To contrast these psychiatric views with historical European pharmacological traditions.
• To review recent scholarship and propose a novel hypothesis for coprophagia in long-term care.

Main Methods:

• Historical analysis of psychiatric literature from 1870s Austria.
• Review of European medical and pharmacological texts.
• Synthesis of recent medical scholarship on institutional coprophagia.

Main Results:

• The 1870s saw the emergence of the first pathological psychiatric frameworks for institutional coprophagia.
• These frameworks linked the behavior to mental illness and dementia.
• A contrast was established with the long-standing European tradition of using excrement therapeutically.

Conclusions:

• 1870s Austrian psychiatry established coprophagia as a pathological symptom, distinct from its historical medicinal applications.
• Recent scholarship is reviewed, proposing a novel hypothesis connecting institutional coprophagia to a lack of healthy human-microbe interactions in long-term care settings.